Ipequey

I just noticed a strange white ball that looks a lot like a spider's egg, covered in tiny polyps (about 1.5mm wide and 2-3mm long). The polyps are a colony of some sort filling in the gaps of my zoa colony.

Are these new zoas? Someone told me the white egg thing might be a pineapple sponge?

Any ideas and suggestions on if I should remove/keep them are greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

I mentioned this at the meetup, but I'll post it here as well. I would be really interested in a "Noob Tank Owner" version of this, in which anyone (especially experienced reefers) could crawl to a few of our tanks that are new and offer advice on anything from build to aquascape to "why is this fish in this tank?" sort of advice/praise.

I know there are other noob reef keepers other than myself that would love folks to stop by and offer advice!

Center Sandbed Fungia Plate? It's hard to tell from the picture. It could be a mushroom as well.

I can't tell what the SPS or the little cups of sand are.

The Cleaner Wrasse sleeps in the rock. It will just retreat into a little bitty crevice and stop moving. The Sixline wrasse should be a cocoon spinner. It will go into a little hole and surround itself with mucus.

Ahhhhh.. good to know. He just seems to sleep a lot. As for the 6 line wrasse, he's not set up a cocoon that I've seen yet. He definitely has his preferred side of the reef though!

The plastic cups were holding sand and gravel bits in hopes the mushrooms would grab onto something large such that we could glue that to the reef and not the mushroom themselves. Funny enough, when the fish we introduced, they knocked them out and sat in the cups themself (thanks blennys!)

I'll be sure to post updated pics as the tank changes!

Hey all,

I've met a few of you at the last ARC meeting (and will meet more at the next). Me and a few friends are working on helping me build my very first salt water tank. I've got a good deal of fresh water/tropical tanks experience, and have finally committed to trying out the difficult world of salt water tanks.

We've got a 65gal tank and stand that we purchased at Fish Gallery and I'll get more details about the lights, protein skimmer, etc when I remember to make notes of all that.

It's been about 3 weeks since it was at that "happy place" such that we could add fish and more. In fact we got a few melon mushrooms and candy canes (trumpets?) from Ty and Timfish (I believe...I'm terrible with names). Those were actually our guinea pigs, along with 3 free peppermint shrimp River City Aquatics gave us to eat the Aiptasia and Mojano that were on 3 of the smaller rocks that they gave us. After 2 weeks of watching those survive, we bought a few Chromis and they're still happily swimming all over the place. After taking advantage of the 1st Friday Sale this past Friday & a stop at Nikos, we stocked up on some other goodies including:

4 more green chromis

1 bicolor blenny

2 tail spot blenny

1 Six line wrasse

2 blue cleaner wrasse

2 Skunk Cleaner Shrimp

10 blue hermit crabs

Everything, aside from the 2 cleaner wrasse seem to be doing ok. They tend to like hiding in the rocks, and I think one might be dead...but then, they always seem to look dead when they "sleep". Maybe they're not getting enough food? Maybe they were just too stressed out from the fish sale. Who knows.

I'll be sure to post more pics as we add more fish, coral and inverts to the reef!

Thank y'all for your help. This forum is amazing and I look forward to helping others once I feel competent enough

Myself and friends had a great time meeting and learning from you guys! Can't wait for next time. The Candy Canes and mushrooms seem to be doing pretty good, even if the live rock was added just 2 days prior I'll get some pictures up soon on a tank build thread

First time attendee. Bringing 2 guests. Can't wait to meet y'all!